Telegram Stories comes to paid Premium users

As promised, Telegram’s new Stories feature is here, but it’s only available to the company’s premium users for now said in a tweet, Last month, CEO Pavel Durov revealed an upcoming feature that offers more granular control than Stories on other apps, letting you choose who can see them and how long they stay before they disappear. Several users on Twitter also reported seeing the new feature.

Telegram’s Stories resemble a similar feature to Facebook’s Messenger, appearing as expandable bubbles at the top of the conversation list. Users can choose to make them viewable to the public, along with a range of other options: Contacts Only (with exceptions), Selected Contacts or Close Friends. You can add captions and links and tag others as well. Users can also share photos and videos captured by the front-facing and rear cameras, similar to posts found on BeReal.

If you don’t want to see posts from a certain contact, you can move them to the “Hidden” list in their Contacts section. Furthermore, users can choose when their stories expire. You can set them to disappear in 24 hours like other services, but you can also have them disappear within 6, 12, or 48 hours. Stories can also be permanently displayed on your profile page – while privacy settings can also be selected for each post.

Everyone can view Stories, and users can send reactions and replies. However, you need to be a Telegram Premium subscriber to post Stories. To do this, you’ll need the latest version of Telegram (it may not be out in your area yet), and pay $4.99 per month for a premium subscription – with discounts available via the web. Premium, which arrived last year, offers 4GB uploads, faster downloads, unique stickers, voice-to-text transcription, double the follow limit, and more.

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